Tag Archives: New Media

A quick, semi-speculative presidential search analysis

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I’ve had a few gut feelings about the presidential search in the last week or so. As a matter of logistics and being prepared to break the story, I’m stuck speculating (we have been all semester, I’m looking at you SEC…) about will happen next. Just what will those darn curators do now?

For months the search has been veiled in this secretive, elaborate web of public notices and closed meetings. We know virtually nothing about any candidates or their qualifications — not even very good rumors — and up until now we’ve never had any idea when a new president might be announced.

But suddenly, I can see the light.

The Board of Curators has passed a list of an undisclosed (surprise) number of finalists to an advisory committee made up of representatives from all walks of academic life at all four UM System campuses.

That’s all fine and dandy, but what that means for us [reporters, the media, et al] is that now that the list of finalists is out and about, there is in fact a timeline for an announcement.

It may be subtle and certainly unintentional, but there are 20 members on the advisory committee. That means there’s upwards of 30+ people (including the curators and involved UM System admins) who know the remaining candidates — and likely know who the front-runner is — spread across the state.

Of course they’re all bound to secrecy, but the curators must understand that the longer they wait with this many people in the know, the higher the risk that one person drops one clue that just happens to make sense to the one reporter who hears it who is able to connect it and figure out the candidate. No matter how far-fetched, it could happen. And the curators have taken such care to be so secret, it would seem there’s no way they’d allow that much risk this late in the game.

I’ve been embedded in this story since the beginning of this semester. So when board Chairman Warren Erdman tells me that the curators will receive the advisory committee’s report Thursday afternoon, I understand that the curators will have two executive sessions (those are the closed-door, private meetings) to discuss the matters at their regularly scheduled meetings this week — all before the normally scheduled press conference Friday morning.

Read for yourself part of the email exchange I had with UM Spokeswoman Jennifer Hollingshead this afternoon. Sometimes the raw answers and context can be more telling than just the parts that make it into my story.

I don’t know about the other news outlets, but I’m letting my colleagues at the Missourian know they’re all on call Friday morning — because I think we’re going to have a new UM System president before this week is out.

I’ll be keeping things updated on my Twitter, @zach_murdock, following Tuesday’s advisory committee meeting and all day Thursday and Friday when the board meets in full at UMSL. Stay tuned to Twitter and columbiamissourian.com for the latest in UM System president news.

See performance funding for yourself

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With all the talk I’ve been doing about performance-based funding, I figured it was time to pony up and actually break it down for those who don’t have the (distinct) pleasure of having all this information circulating in their heads.

Here’s a basic breakdown of how the model might look if implemented the way it’s designed now.

Key word: might.

A lot of the details still have yet to be worked out and I think the graphic and story reflect that with a certain amount of ambiguity.

Faculty have the chance to discuss this issue further at this afternoon’s general faculty meeting before the model moves right along to the Coordinating Board of Higher Education for approval in December.

Credit to graphics gal Rachel Rice at the Columbia Missourian for putting together this visual.

Clever Curator Consonance

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Still confused about exactly what happened at the UM System Board of Curators meeting last week? That’s OK, so are all of the sports reporters (just kidding, though all the important news was reserved for us higher education writers).

Last week was a regularly scheduled board meeting that once again got the sports spotlight treatment, even though meeting included so much more than conference realignment.

The board met behind closed doors Wednesday and Thursday night to discuss the presidential search and again all afternoon Thursday to cover a ton of information points and action items. The board voted to approve a much-debated retirement plan, renovations to the MU campus and a new athletic training degree program.

In the end though, everything was overshadowed by the press conference Friday. Board Chairman Warren Erdman made two announcements — first, that the board would produce a group of system presidential finalists to their advisory committee (the hot news I was there to cover), and second that the board had chosen to give Deaton all the power he needs to change MU’s conference affiliation.

I know and understand (both as a reporter and a fan) that the sports story is unbelievably big deal, but the way the conference realignment announcements have overshadowed the other vitally important things the curators are doing is a little frustrating.

Nonetheless, I had a great time reporting the meetings and spending time with education and sports reporters alike.

Much like the Oct. 4 curators meeting in St. Louis, I split my time reporting and live-tweeting the meetings, this time with a mix of personal and Missourian twitter accounts.

I felt much more comfortable operating CoTweet to publish tweets from the Missourian’s Twitter accounts, and published 19 tweets over the course of three days (plus many more from my personal account). Nine of those came as general updates about the curators meetings from @CoMissourian, and another 10 from @CoMoSports during Friday’s press conference.

To keep things flowing over the multiday meetings we chose to tie together all the tweets relating to the curators with the hashtag: #umcurators. That way folks who were genuinely following along could search the hashtag to find all of the relevant tweets and see the chronology of the meetings.

Plus the content of what I was tweeting was infinitely more effective than the last time I live-tweeted the curators, and the number of retweets proves that people found the information valuable. Although I would have loved to see more engagement with @CoMissourian during the meetings, perhaps the folks most interested — and that have the most questions or concerns — about the retirement plan aren’t exactly of the Twitter generation (which is admittedly an unfair assumption, because there are lots of older adults on Twitter and lots of younger folks concerned about retirement plans).

Regardless, the week was full of steps forward: for my tweeting skills, for the presidential search, and for (apparently) the future of MU’s conference affiliation.

CoTweet and Curators Part II (Belated)

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Although it’s several days late, I can’t help but publish the post I had written following Tuesday’s UM System Board of Curators meeting and subsequent press conference.

A couple of things stood in the way of the publishing of this post: a) a lead on a news story that came about up about a proposed academic freedom policy and b) the passing of Apple CEO and technology mogul Steve Jobs.

Tuesday was a reporting marathon for those of us who made the trip to the UMSL student center for the Board of Curators meeting and press conference.

Though I did get the chance to write an article of my own on the proposed new retirement plan, the real learning experience came from just watching MU football beat writer Harry Plumer and his sports-writer colleagues from other (competitor) newspapers/media outlets.

Listening to those writers talk shop as they stood around waiting (nearly 4 hours) for the night’s press conference was an awesome backstage look at the community of sports writers that cover Mizzou athletics.

And it is very much a community. As Harry told me later that night, they’re all in it together — and that’s the attitude each of the writers brought to the meeting, and it was cool to see them help each other out.

My other big learning experience Tuesday was CoTweet, and getting a feel for what it really takes to live-tweet an event. It’s a situation where you’re required to make a lot of split-second decisions, and the pressure is on when you’re tweeting live alongside you’re competitors.

During the public session, I had trouble taking diligent notes while trying to make those on-the-spot decisions about tweeting, so I abandoned the idea and focused instead on the article I knew I needed to write.

But that evening, Harry and I decided that I would take over the @CoMoSports twitter account and live tweet the press conference. With my focus just on tweeting, I think I did a better job of actively listening for tweet-worthy lines, but I’d just scratched the surface.

Even with all of my attention turned to tweeting, I was still faced with a multitude of decisions — do I directly quote or paraphrase? How should I attribute? Should I mention other twitter accounts?

In the end, I tweeted 7 times from @CoMoSports, and though none of the tweets were really substantial, they did get the main points of the press conference across to readers who were watching their timelines. If I got to make excuses for myself, I’d chalk up my difficulties to being a rookie and I’d argue that I’m much better prepared for the next time I get to tweet.

Overall, it was fun to be a part of such a big announcement and it was a good, long reporting day.

CoTweet and Curators Part I

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Today’s a big news day here in Missouri, and all eyes are on the Millennium Student Center at the University of Missouri—St. Louis and the UM System Board of Curators.

The board meets today in St. Louis to discuss the latest draft of a new employee retirement plan (that’s where I come in), but will also have two executive sessions that will be closed to the public, the second of which will be a full board executive session behind closed doors (where everyone else comes in).

The student center should be packed — there’s been plenty of speculation that following this full board meeting, board chairman Warren Erdman will make an announcement regarding Mizzou’s allegiance to the Big 12 (or its infidelity with the SEC). MU has been flirting with the idea of pursuing another athletic conference for awhile, but as Harry Plumer told me yesterday: it’s time for MU to put up, or shut up.

Harry’s one of the Missourian’s MU Football writers, and has been covering MU’s position in the conference realignment for awhile. He and I will be in St. Louis for today’s meetings.

But a rumored conference announcement is not my interest (as a writer at least). Instead, I’ll be covering the curators’ discussion of the new retirement plan which has been a hot issue and even has the curators disagreeing. I’ve covered official Board of Curators meetings before, but what’s different today is that I have access to the @CoMissourian twitter account through CoTweet, an online engagement platform.

Even though I’d consider myself an experienced Twitter user, there is a sense of power associated with tweeting from @CoMissourian. In a way, the Missourian’s reputation is most vulnerable on Twitter and I’d hate to be that guy that tweets something embarrassing or incorrect from the paper’s handle.

Of course I’ll have plenty of support back in the Missourian newsroom from Community Outreach Director Joy Mayer and her on duty team member. They’ll be looking over my shoulder to edit tweets and keep mentioners engaged.

The ability to live-tweet important notes and quotes from the meeting isn’t exactly new to me, but I’ve never tweeted officially for the paper as part of my reporting. It’ll certainly be a valuable learning experience and I’m sure it won’t be the last time I incorporate live social media into my reporting.

Follow today’s meetings on Twitter from @zach_murdock and @CoMissourian, and keep an eye out for a “CoTweet and Curators Part II” follow-up post tomorrow morning.